Devonport has been robbed to pay Portsmouth - now it needs more than just crumbs

With the results of the latest defence review due to be revealed soon, Iain Ballantyne takes a hard look at where Devonport Naval Base and its adjoining dockyard stand in the scheme of things and whether or not they have a bright future

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There was a time around a decade ago when the Royal Navy seriously contemplated reducing its Portsmouth naval bastion, which has not hosted a fully-fledged dockyard for around 30 years, even though it can handle the occasional ship refit.

It seemed the Navy’s top brass and Ministry of Defence would finally yield to the obvious logic that Devonport Naval Base and its superb dockyard was, and remains to this day, the best hub for a fighting fleet in Western Europe. If only they would make the most of it.

Yet, here we are in 2018 with Portsmouth secure - thanks to new aircraft carriers - with the Hampshire base also snugly accommodating new destroyers and patrol ships.

The embedding of the Navy Command Headquarters at Whale Island - which, like a Death Star tractor beam, has pulled in HQs functions that used to be spread across the UK - also greatly helps Portsmouth. This is especially so in an era of a much shrunken fleet when many ambitious naval officers spend more of their time ashore than at sea. They also want to be near London, the other magnet for career naval officers within the byzantine bureaucracy that is today’s Ministry of Defence.

Meanwhile, HM Naval Base Clyde is sucking in all the submarines - half of which have traditionally been hosted by Devonport - and at a time when the UK could still break up, leaving nuclear attack boats and ‘bombers’ (Trident subs) in a country with a nationalist Scottish government that wishes to kick them out. The Westminster administration is investing billions in expanding Faslane (aka HMNB Clyde) with, allegedly, no Plan B if an independent Scotland gives the submarines their marching orders.

When major cuts are mentioned, it is still Plymouth-based units and Devonport’s naval base and dockyard jobs that are in the crosshairs of Treasury-driven, so-called defence reviews and industry ‘rationalisations’.

It all sits uneasily with the fact that, post-Brexit, the UK is meant to be looking to the world - for wherever trade is found, so should the Royal Navy also have an enduring presence (something it has found very hard to achieve in recent years).

The future surely requires the UK to truly expand its fighting fleet and naval infrastructure across country? Bizarrely, in spite of impressive expansion of navies globally - particularly by big league potential foes - and commensurate rising threats at sea, the UK Government has continued to hack away at the British fleet’s sinews, creating a lop-sided, top heavy force.

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Back in 2010, under the calamitous Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), Plymouth saw four frigates and their crews deleted. In the past 18 months it has had Royal Marines taken away from 42 Commando and at one stage looked highly likely to lose up to 1,000 more marines along with the assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, plus a survey vessel.

Even further cuts to Type 23 frigates - three of which have already been dispensed with - are possibly on the options list, to save money and divert people to Portsmouth’s carriers. The three Type 23s were bought by an eager Chile just over a decade ago while, just last year, the Devonport-based flagship helicopter carrier HMS Ocean was purchased by Brazil, so freeing up sailors for the Portsmouth-based carriers.

The process of robbing Peter (Devonport) to pay Paul (Portsmouth) is a major driver for naval decisions, as the Navy fights to ensure the new carriers can get to sea and be operated properly.

The city has lost: the Commando Forces HQ transferred to Portsmouth; frigates axed early and scrapped or sold off (there were 25 based in Plymouth in 1991 and today just eight); Scotland got the new Astute Class subs instead of Devonport (as was the original plan); commando units switched to north Devon; a world-beating naval engineering college closed (despite innovative proposals to give it a future); an armaments depot run down; regional naval headquarters gone; a RAF sea rescue training base discarded; global Rescue Co-ordination Centre shut. Many thousands of highly skilled and well-paid dockyard and military jobs were rubbed out as the Navy declined inexorably to become a shadow of its former self - shrinking by more than 50 per cent since 1991.

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Some of this was understandable, as part of the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ and there were minor boosts. In the mid-1990s the Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) organisation was switched to Plymouth from Portland (which suffered its naval base being shut, though it still has Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels). Four diesel submarines were transferred from Gosport to Devonport (but were then mothballed and later sold to Canada, which now makes excellent use of them).

In the early 1990s Devonport did - very much against the odds - win the so-called Battle of the Dockyards with Rosyth in Scotland to secure the contract to refit Trident missile subs and nuclear-powered attack submarines. It is also meant to be the main refit centre of major surface warships - other than the carriers and Royal Fleet Auxiliaries - though such vessels offer nothing like the work they used to, as they are now so few (and Portsmouth still gets warship refit contracts too).

Without new vessels actually based in Devonport the future is bound to be less secure and likely to be a diet of whatever extra crumbs the Government can spare. Further contraction of the naval base and dockyard estate cannot be ruled out.

In late 2017 Iain was awarded a Fellowship by the UK’s Maritime Foundation - one of its top annual awards - presented to him by the First Sea Lord at an event in London. The award saluted Iain’s immense contribution to the maritime cause since 1990, as a journalist (including his time as the Plymouth Herald’s first Defence Reporter), author of naval history books and Editor of WARSHIPS IFR.